


one step closer, getting brighter

by vintaged



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Boyfriends, Character Development, Character Study, Jean/Marco - Freeform, M/M, jeanmarco, there's no such thing as a truly happy jeanmarco story let me tell you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 08:16:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1597979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintaged/pseuds/vintaged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You do not love him, at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one step closer, getting brighter

**Author's Note:**

> song is "Brightest Hour" by the Submarines
> 
> this piece is sort of a huge dump of all of my jeanmarco emotions; hope you enjoy!

You do not love him, at first. In fact, you find him slightly irritating; the first time you shake his hand, he smiles so wide you’re afraid his lips will tear.

“Hello!” He says, pumping your hand up and down eagerly. “My name is Marco, Marco Bott. It’s great to meet you.”

 You don’t meet his eyes; they’re too bright, too alive, for your taste. He seems too young to be as aware as you are. “Jean,” you grunt instead.

“Jean what?”

“Kirstein.”

Marco ducks his head a little as he releases your hand. “Hey Jean,” he says, slower; you like the sound of your name on his tongue, like the roll of the _j_ and the lilt of the _n_ when they trip from between his lips. “Nice… to meet you.”

His fingers leave little indents in your palm, and the lack of pressure feels suddenly, strangely wrong.

 

-

 

You begin to eat together. Most meals, actually; the first breakfast you remember because of him, anyways, because when you enter the dining hall (filled with people you don’t know yet, but you will, one day), still ever so slightly unsure of yourself, he stands up and waves to you from a far off table.

“Jean!” Marco yells, a dark hand already up above the many heads. “Jean! Over here!”

You push your way towards him, food clasped between your hands. That Jeager kid is watching you through squinted eyes, and the last thing you need is to be seen eating, alone and pretending not to care, in some abandoned corner; and besides, you concede as you reach Marco and let him pull you down across the table, this kid seems friendly enough.

And so it starts.

 

-

 

You find him fascinating, in a way. He is so bright, gangly and kind and understanding; he knows what he will face, he has accepted that it will all end, probably brutally and without meaning. That this training is but a step towards a bloodied fate that not even the Military Police can restrain.

When you bring this up (backs against the splintery wood of the barracks’ walls, sweating in the summer heat), Marco smiles. He tilts his head back, and you find yourself (wrongly, of course) struck by the curve of his neck and the tracks of sweat marking his freckled skin.

“Of course I’m going to die,” he says after a moment. “We all are.” Another pause, heavy and humid. Then:

“I’m not joining the Military Police to run from that, Jean,” and he turns his head slightly to meet your gaze, the smile now gone, “Are you?”

 

-

 

You train together, now. Sit up long after dark in a corner of the barracks reading up on maneuver gear, titans (what little there is), tactics, anything and everything; await each other at meals, befriend trainees together. You expect him to be near you, and you hope he expects the same of you.

 

-

 

You have other friends, of course; you watch Mikasa (“like a lost puppy,” Marco tells you), wrestle with Reiner, flirt halfheartedly with Christa under the icy gaze of Ymir. You begin to find yourself growing fond of them, even Jaeger, and you quietly mourn the eventual parting of ways.

Not him, though. He will remain, always, your constant.

 

-

 

A year and a half into training, Marco switches bunks with Connie, claiming that his bunk is too small and he needs the room, and at first you think it’s a good idea –especially when Connie happily agrees to move “away from that goddamn idiot.” Until it isn’t, because now he is closer than before, in a way you didn’t expect, didn’t want. The nice thing about Connie, you had found, was his tendency to sleep loudly, all limbs and snores and _presence_. You knew you could roll over and kick him away, and he would snort like a piglet and maybe (at best) twitch an arm in recognition. It was raucous, normal.

Marco is different. The first night he sleeps beside you, you stay awake for a time whispering about meaningless, empty things that make him smile (you like when he smiles, and the freckles around his eyes disappear in crinkles that you hope will stay, someday). After the third complaint, though, you both decide it would be better to continue tomorrow, and you begin to shuffle so that your back is to him.

But after a while, when Marco’s breathing has slowed to a gentle rhythm, you find that your shoulders are tensed, your fists clenched. You are too aware, suddenly, of his nearness –and you are overwhelmed with the urge to turn and see him, make sure he is there.

(And you cannot resist; you never can resist _him._ )

Marco’s expression, when you shift to face him, is so relaxed that for a moment you feel your chest seize at the sight. Even in the dark, you can find his eyes, shuttered by long lashes; the soft curve of his cheeks; the slightly parted lips, chapped and torn.

You are struck by this strange, childish beauty -and even as you fear him waking to find you staring, you cannot turn away.

 

-

 

You remind him (and yourself) the next day of Mikasa’s own beauty. Marco smiles at your words, as always; but you are awakened, all at once, to the fact that the smile does not reach his eyes.

 

-

 

At this point both of you are among the top ten of your class. You remind yourself that the final tests may place you differently, but there is still that slight tremor of excitement at the notion of the Military Police. Of safety.

Only one year to go.

 

-

 

Slowly, you adjust to sleeping beside him. It takes even longer than you think it could have, because you find yourself, every now and again, turning in the dark to count the freckles on his nose, cheeks, shoulders. You can’t help it; you thought that you would tire of his face, of that peaceful expression, and yet you always find something new, something to see that you have never seen before.

And sometimes, in the silence of the night, you wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

(The urge passes. It has to.)

 

-

 

At one point, you sprain your ankle when you fall awkwardly off a practice titan and your leg catches under your maneuver gear. You are embarrassed, at first, especially when Jaeger comes to visit you with Armin, and laughs his fucking ass off. If it weren’t for Armin, you’re sure, the suicidal idiot would have probably stayed for hours reliving your expression when you hit the ground; as it is, the most you can shoot Armin is a small smile when he guides Jaeger away, to be replaced (luckily) by Marco.

He laughs, too, but it’s a much kinder laugh; the kind that makes you offer up a small, pained one of your own. But when Marco leans forward to adjust the pillow under your foot, you cannot smother the hiss of pain the movement causes. He jerks backwards immediately at the sound, yelping apologies, and before you can think you’ve reached out and grabbed his hand just to get him to _shut up for a second_.

Marco’s hand is callused in yours, worn at the palms and fingertips, and you blame the roughness of his skin for the pause before you let go.

 

-

 

You begin to wonder what the Military Police will hold for you, if you make it in. You have heard, since you were young, about the corruption among the higher levels of government -the things that threaten to topple the system with the underhanded dealings everyone knows of, vague outlines of greed; in the back of your mind, you must acknowledge that you are a coward… but you will be a coward with air in his lungs. To join any other branch of the military would bring its own corruption –you are simply choosing the one that guarantees survival.

You will miss the others. It is a strange feeling

 

-

 

Number six. 

He is number seven.

You sigh in relief, and realize you have been holding your breath since the day you met him.

 

-

 

You find Marco, later, slumped against a wall in the ruins of a town you never wanted to know. At first you cannot look at him, at those empty eyes and ragdoll figure -and then, suddenly, you cannot tear your eyes away.

Half of him is missing, and in this way you lose half of yourself.

 

-

 

When he is gone, you realize (and it hurts, to know this, it almost breaks you) that there is nothing left to carry with you. You have no memento, no piece of him to put away in your pocket, to clutch in your fist or sew to your jacket. He –in the eyes of humanity- was but a casualty, one of millions upon millions. He didn’t even get a grave; and because of this you cannot forget him, because to forget Marco is to leave him to burn alone, surrounded by strangers who cannot even spell his name.

In time, though, you will forget his face; the sound of his laughter; the curve of his throat. You will try, at first, to keep him ever present in your mind, to imprint inside your eyes the image of his smile. You will fail, too; the years will pass, centuries in themselves, and slowly, oh so slowly, he will fade -until suddenly one day you realize with a jolt that he is gone.

 

-

 

_You kiss him, once, and when you wake you believe it is a dream. You tell yourself you imagined the way he awoke under your steady gaze, in the early hours of the morning. That your sleep-addled mind played a cruel trick on you, when it told you that he opened those bright eyes and simply smiled, slowly and evenly; that the sight of his lazy grin was too much, even for you, and that when your hand reached out, fingers grazing the outline of his lips, he only watched you, the observer. That when you leaned forward, softly pressed your lips to the corner of his mouth, all he did was sigh –quietly, contentedly._

_Neither of you ever mention it, and so it ends._


End file.
